Social networking provides an efficient means of communication among friends, family, coworkers, and even with the general public. Social networking is becoming increasingly popular because it provides a unified platform for socializing with other people in a way that never existed. Thanks to recent technological developments, users can more easily connect to social networking sites from using their mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets, set-top boxes, and televisions. For their convenience, accessibility to rich and diverse content, and entertainment, social networking sites are replacing conventional forms of communication such as newspapers, radios, television, publishing, and emails. This opens up a new business opportunity for advertisers, content owners, and social networking companies.
Users of social networking sites or services access and watch multimedia clips, live TV shows or dramas, sporting events, and movies provided by media providers as well as user-created-content (UCC) that other users have created. Those users may desire to share media clips or points in time of media clips as they watch them. For example, social networking users often have reactions to live television broadcast that they watch and desire to share messages about the moment with others within a social network with a specific reference to their comments and a link to the media clips. On the other hand, content owners such as broadcast networks, advertisers or users who created their own content, may desire to allow others to share a short segment of their content in specific terms and conditions over social networks. Such media sharing and commenting over social networking sites can further facilitate users' communication and enhance user experience of exchanging comments and sharing the media.
Conventional image/video capturing from a media source requires specialized equipment. The users need to manually edit media files using client editing software such as Avid or Final Cut—to create a clip and upload captured clips to social networks or video hosting sites. Usually, unauthorized use of content, although the content is available in public, violates copyright because rights have not been negotiated with the content owner for such a use and the user often has no relationship with the content owner. Users post comments in social networks with reference to time codes or video segments as they view live video. Other users view the referenced video but the users' comments do not automatically link to the point in time of the referenced clip.